In this paper we develop a theoretical model in order to understand co-movements between asset returns and consumption over short and long horizons. We present an intertemporal general equilibrium model featuring two types of shocks: "small", frequent and disembodied shocks to productivity and "large" technological innovations, which are embodied into new vintages of the capital stock. The latt...

In this paper, we analyze how the introduction of habits and aspirations affects the distribution of wealth when individuals’ labor productivity is subject to idiosyncratic shocks and bequests arise from a joy-of-giving motive. In the presence of either bequests or aspirations, labor income shocks are transmitted intergenerationally and this transmission, together with the contemporaneous incom...

We develop a tractable dynamic general equilibrium model of oligopolistic competition with a continuum of heterogeneous industries. Industries are exposed to aggregate and industry-specific productivity shocks. Firms in each industry set value-maximizing state-contingent markups, taking as given the behavior of all other industries. When consumers are risk-averse, industry markups are countercy...

Macroeconomic shocks and labour-market institutions jointly determine employment growth and economic performance. The effect of shocks depends on the nature of these institutions and the effect of institutional change depends on the macroeconomic environment. It follows that a given set of institutions may be appropriate in one epoch and not in another. We derive a dynamic model of labour deman...

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to analyze the impacts of credit and technology shocks on business cycle dynamics, where firms rely on banks and households for capital financing. Firms are identical ex ante but differ ex post due to different realizations of firm specific technology shocks, possibly leading to default by some firms. The paper advances a new modelling approach for th...

Why was the 1990s a lost decade for Japan? How is it possible that the Japanese economy stagnated for a decade if none of the shocks that arguably hit the economy seemed to have persisted for much more than three years or so? In this paper I show that the endogenous development and adoption of technologies can propagate these shocks making their e¤ect much more persistent. When feeding the mark...

This paper extends Nolan and Thoenissen (2009), hence NT, model with an explicit financial intermediary that transfer funds from households to entrepreneurs subject to a well defined loan production function. The loan productivity shock is treated as the supply side financial disturbance. Together with NT’s net worth shock that resembles the credit demand perturbation, both of the two-sided sho...

The US economy has become more stable. At the same time, US firms have become more volatile. I present the evidence and I propose a common explanation, based on the idea that goods markets have become more competitive. Competition between firms magnifies the effects of idiosyncratic productivity shocks: This can explain the rise in firm volatility. On the other hand, for given nominal adjustmen...

We discuss an economy which is subject to aggregate productivity shocks affecting all factors of production. The additional presence of income risk shifts the margin where agents save out of precautionary motives downwards, such that it does no longer correspond to logarithmic preferences.

The date of receipt and acceptance will be inserted by the editor Summary. This note studies conditions under which sequences of state variables generated by discrete-time stochastic optimal accumulation models have law of large numbers and central limit properties. Productivity shocks with unbounded support are considered. Instead of restrictions on the support of the shock, an " average contr...